Wiesel urged Romania to take responsibility for Holocaust

The deceased author’s home country deported 150,000 Jews and 25,000 Roma to concentration camps during World War II

By AP 3 July 2016, 4:32 pm

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Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel speaks at an award ceremony held at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, August 31, 2010. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)

BUCHAREST, Romania — Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel was responsible for making his native Romania investigate the Holocaust and face its responsibility.

Romania deported 150,000 Jews and 25,000 Roma, also known as Gypsies, to concentration camps in an area of the Soviet Union controlled by the Axis powers from 1942 to 1944, when the country was run by pro-Nazi dictator Ion Antonescu.

After communism ended, many denied or downplayed Romania’s role in the Holocaust. In 2004, Wiesel chaired the Wiesel Commission, which documented Romania’s role in the Holocaust and a government institute was set up bearing his name in 2005.

Bucharest's Jewish State Theater served as a cultural refuge for Romanian Jews during the Holocaust. (Wikimedia Commons/JTA) — Bucharest’s Jewish State Theater served as a cultural refuge for Romanian Jews during the Holocaust. (Wikimedia Commons/JTA)

That institute, the National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania, on Sunday called him “a tireless campaigner for freedom and human rights, for respecting each other, for the understanding and the dialogue between people.”

The Center for Monitoring Antisemitism in Romania thanked Wiesel for his support for the Holocaust Memorial in Bucharest, saying: “In 2003, when no one in Romania responded to our initiative for constructing the Holocaust Memorial in Bucharest, we turned, for support, to Elie Wiesel. He responded to our appeal and our project became a reality that, for generations, will honor the memory of the victims, Jews and Roma, of the WWII Romanian fascist regime.”